Tag: minnie

How popular is the baby name Minnie in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Find out using the graph below! Plus, see baby names similar to Minnie and check out all the blog posts that mention the name Minnie.

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And here’s some extra information I forgot to mention in the last post: In 1860, the city of Providence was home to 29.0% of Rhode Island’s population. In 1870, it was home to 31.7% of the population. So each of these 3 sets of rankings (1866, 1867, 1868) ought to account for roughly 30% of the residents of the state.

Now, on to the names…

Top 5

The top 5 girl names and boy names of 1866 were, unsurprisingly, very similar to the top names of 1867.

Top Baby Girl Names

Top Baby Boy Names

1. Mary
2. Catherine
3. Ellen
4. Margaret
5. Sarah

1. John
2. William
3. James
4. George
5. Thomas

The girls’ top 5 is identical, while the boys’ top 5 includes Thomas instead of George.

Girl Names

As expected, Mary was the front-runner by a huge margin. And, while there were dozens of Catherines, and a single Catharine, there weren’t any Katherines.

Back in 1886, writers at the New York newspaper The Sun spotted the name “Mellie Butterfield” in the Omaha Herald and it piqued their curiosity.

In the same column…we found Nellies and Minnies, Gussies and Lizzies, Mollies and Sadies, Tillies and Sallies, Bessies, Maggies, Jennies, Tudies [sic], and the whole run of nursery names, but we were able to infer the real and dignified names of these lovely young women.

They couldn’t figure out Mellie, though. So they asked the Herald editor for the details. He said Mellie’s real name was Mellona after the Roman goddess Mellona. (Mellona is based on the Latin word mel, meaning “honey.”)

It seems that the young lady’s grandfather was a Presbyterian minister [Rev. Josiah Moulton], and that he gave the name to her mother at the suggestion of a classically inclined brother clergyman, and that Mellona was therefore handed down to the daughter.

The anonymous Sun writers were not keen on the name Mellona:

“Mellona? We cannot say that we like the name suggested by the clergyman”

“it is so unusual as to be odd”

“why did he not call her Melissa”

“A very odd name for a girl is objectionable rather than otherwise”

“surely there is nothing peculiarly beautiful in Mellona to call for its selection”

“the Moulton family have a monopoly of its use — and they are likely to keep it”

Their final comment — “Mellona is a much more suitable name for a young lady than Mellie” — was vaguely complimentary, but it doesn’t quite make up for the string of criticisms that preceded it.

Do you agree with them about the name Mellona?

Source: “Mellie.” Sun [New York] 19 Jul. 1886: 2.

(That post about women’s pet names from a few months ago was also based on a Sun essay.)

The registrar of Providence, Rhode Island, published a series of documents listing all “of the names of persons deceased, born and married in the city of Providence” during years 1866, 1867 and 1868. The series may have been longer, but these are the only documents I could find online.

I’ve finally finished creating a set of rankings using one of the documents — 1867. But before we get to the rankings, here are some stats:

1,547 babies were born in Providence in 1867, going by the number of babies listed in the document itself. According to the document’s introduction, though, the number is 1,625. Not sure what to make of this discrepancy.

1,431 of these babies (713 girls and 718 boys) had names that were registered with the government at the time of publication. The other 116 babies got blank spaces. Either their names hadn’t been registered yet, or they hadn’t been named yet, or perhaps they died young and never received a name.

The Arizona city of Sedona was named after the first postmaser’s wife — but only because all the other names he’d submitted to the U.S. Post Office Department got rejected.

The wife in question is Sedona Arabella Miller, born in Missouri in 1877. She pronounced her name “see-dona” and went by the nicknames Donie (as a kid) and Dona (as an adult).

Sedona was the only one in her family with an unusual name; her siblings included Lillie, Edna, Minnie, Noah, and Edward. Her mother said simply, “I liked the sound of it.” It is possible that she had heard the Creole name Sedonie, used among free women of color in the South.

[Sedonie is probably a variant of Sidonie, which is a French feminine form of the Latin name Sidonius, which means “of Sidon.” Sidon was an ancient Phoenician city-state.]

Sedona married Theodore Carlton “T.C.” Schnebly on her 20th birthday, and in 1901 she and T.C. moved to Arizona with their two young children.

Not long after they arrived, T.C. decided the settlement needed a post office, so he applied for a post office name. But all the names he sent in — Schnebly Station, Red Rock Crossing, Oak Creek Station — were rejected, as they were too long to fit on the cancellation stamp beside “Arizona Territory.”

Finally, at the suggestion of his brother, T.C. tried his wife’s name. The relatively short “Sedona” was approved. By mid-1902, T.C. had the Sedona post office up and running “in the back of the Schnebly home.”

*

So the baby name Sedona existed before the city did, but it’s never been popular enough to rank in the U.S. top 1,000.

Here’s how many U.S. babies have been named Sedona since the year 2000:

2013: 38 baby girls named Sedona (7 in AZ)

2012: 55 baby girls named Sedona (9 in AZ, 9 in CA)

2011: 51 baby girls named Sedona (6 in AZ, 7 in CA)

2010: 60 baby girls named Sedona (8 in AZ, 12 in CA)

2009: 69 baby girls named Sedona (8 in AZ, 11 in CA)

2008: 91 baby girls named Sedona (18 in AZ, 11 in CA)

2007: 75 baby girls named Sedona (17 in AZ, 7 in CA)

2006: 76 baby girls named Sedona (14 in AZ, 8 in CA)

2005: 58 baby girls named Sedona (6 in AZ, 9 in CA)

2004: 77 baby girls named Sedona (12 in AZ, 10 in CA)

2003: 66 baby girls named Sedona (16 in AZ, 10 in CA)

2002: 76 baby girls named Sedona (14 in AZ, 7 in CA)

2001: 62 baby girls named Sedona (12 in AZ, 9 in CA)

2000: 69 baby girls named Sedona (8 in AZ, 10 in CA)

Baby names that coincide with city names tend to be less popular among locals (i.e., Brooklyn and Madison are less popular among New Yorkers and Wisconsinites, respectively) but that’s not the case for Sedona.

Of the 923 baby girls named Sedona since the turn of the century, 155 (17%) were born in Arizona, making Arizona the state with the most Sedonas.

In second place is California with 120 Sedonas (13%). In third is Texas with 24 Sedonas (3%).

Arizona’s numbers are even more impressive when you consider that both California and Texas welcome several times as many babies as Arizona does per year.

A while ago I found a book called “A Collection of Original Acrostics on Ladies’ Christian Names” that was published in Toronto in 1888.

I won’t post any of the poems, which are all pretty cheesy, but author George J. Howson does include an intriguing selection of names. He notes that he wrote acrostics for “all the most popular feminine christian names of the day, and many more that, while not in common use, are known to exist in actual life.”

Vicki Betts, a librarian at the University of Texas, put together a neat list of female names using the 1860 census records for Smith County, Texas.

Here’s some background information, per Vicki:

Ninety per cent of the people had emigrated to the county within the preceding ten years, 95.8% born in the states of the future Confederacy, 1.8% in the border states, 1.6% in northern states, and 0.8% in foreign countries. Therefore, these name should be fairly representative of Southern female names in general, with the exception of Alamo, Texas, Texana, etc.

And now the names! Here are the names that appeared most frequently on the 1860 Smith County census:

If you do a Google search for the name Bruno Banani, you will get the German underwear company of that name. But it’s also the name of the first Winter Olympian from Tonga. Born Fuahea Semi, the Tongan rugby player and luger went by Bruno Banani to court sponsorship from the company. It was part of a deal endorsed by the Tongan royal family to enable the athlete to afford training in Germany with the world’s best lugers. The company insinuated that the name was just a coincidence that led to the sponsorship, but that story unraveled quickly. It wasn’t “just” a hoax; Semi legally changed his name to Bruno Banani. The International Olympic Committee decided that even though using a sponsor’s name is in bad taste, Banani is the name on his passport, so he will be the lone athlete representing Tonga at Sochi in the luge event.

From the NYT obituary of Pitcairner and Bounty mutineer descendant Tom Christian:

There are no automobiles on Pitcairn, and the island’s rocks and cliffs bear names redolent of long-ago tragedies: “Where Dan Fall,” “Where Minnie Off,” “Oh Dear.”

[…]

Besides his daughter Jacqueline, Mr. Christian’s survivors include his wife, the former Betty Christian, whom he married in 1966 (like many Pitcairn couples, they are distant cousins); three other daughters, Raelene Christian, Sherileen Christian and Darlene McIntyre; and six grandchildren.

So when I signed up for my son’s preschool, I told them my name was Penelope Trunk. My husband had a fit. He told me I was starting our new life in Madison as an insane person and I cannot change my name now.

But I explained to him that it would be insane not to change my name now. I am way better known as Penelope than Adrienne. And my career is so closely tied with the brand Penelope Trunk, that I actually became the brand. So calling myself Penelope Trunk instead of Adrienne Greenheart is actually a way to match my personal life with my professional life and to make things more sane.

At first it was a little weird. For example, we were driving in the car one day and my son said, “Mom, who’s Penelope Trunk?”

But now it feels good to be Penelope Trunk. No more having to figure out what name to give where. No more pretending to be someone, sometimes. No more long explanations and short memories of who calls me what.

Before heading to Quito, an Ecuadorian friend warned me about the importance of social class, saying “It’s a really big deal over there.” Although I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, after being here for 8 months, I realize that her statement certainly holds true. Though subtle, I hear class-related conversation almost every day.

Like the United States, social class influences several aspects of your life. Examples include neighborhood, appearance, education, and even your last name. However, unlike the United States, there is little social mobility. People born in the lower class will usually remain there for the rest of their lives, tending to give a sense of superiority to many members of Ecuador’s upper class.

During Christmas dinner, a member of my host family revealed that she was pregnant. The entire family was excited, and immediately began suggesting baby names. After someone suggested a name, my host mom scrunched up her face in disapproval and replied “¡Suena como nombre de taxista,” or “Sounds like a taxi driver’s name!” Everyone laughed. Apparently the thought of the baby, a member of Quito’s upper-middle class, having a name fit for a “lowly” taxista was absurd and comical. These kinds of assertions are not extremely uncommon.

The most famous of all the Mercury chimps, due to his landmark January 1961 flight, Ham was actually not publicly called Ham until after the flight succeeded. The name by which he’s now known — an acronym for Holloman Aerospace Medical Center at the Air Force base — was only widely used when he returned safely to earth; NASA reportedly wanted to avoid bad publicity should a named (and thus a known, publicly embraced) animal be killed; all the Mercury chimps were known by numbers.